AN IRANIAN activist has gone missing after criticising a proposed Bill to implement highly restrictive internet policies, his family said on Saturday.

Hossein Ronaghi, a blogger and free-speech campaigner, disappeared on Wednesday after he criticised a parliamentary Bill to limit internet access known as the users’ protection Bill. The proposal has been criticised by many Iranians on social media.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, compained in March last year that social media in Iran is “unbridled” and that it should not be “surrendered to the enemy.”

In a recent tweet, Mr Ronaghi said: “The protection plan was a decision made by the entire system based on the demand from the Islamic Republic’s leader who had stated: ‘Virtual space must be controlled’.”

Mr Ronaghi’s brother, Hassan, who also is an activist, said in a tweet that Hossein had been kidnapped. He warned that his brother needs medical care because of a disease affecting several of his organs.

“Anything that happens to Hossein is the responsibility of the Supreme Leaders’ office, the [Revolutionary Guard], and the judiciary.”

Reza Ronaghi, the father of the two brothers, said in an interview with Iranian foreign-based media on Wednesday that Mr Khamenei was directly responsible for his son’s life.

A day after the first reports surfaced of his disappearance, rights activists reported that security forces had entered Hossein Ronaghi’s home and taken a laptop and notebooks.

The language in the proposed internet legislation has yet to be finalised. But if implemented in its current form, it could lead to the disruption of international internet services and websites such as Instagram that have not yet been blocked.

Under pressure from hard-liners, the Iranian government has long blocked access to many websites and social media platforms, from YouTube and Facebook to Twitter and Telegram.

Many Iranians, especially youngsters, bypass the blocks via VPNs and proxies. Instagram and WhatsApp remain unblocked.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, this is not the first time Mr Ronaghi has been arrested.

In December 2009, in the mass arrests that followed post-election protests over voter fraud allegations in the re-election of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he was arrested after discussing politics in a series of critical blogs that were eventually blocked by the government.